EPTTotal War: Warhammer III - Page 2
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Erasme
Bahamas15899 Posts
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Biff The Understudy
France7881 Posts
On February 07 2021 01:36 andrewlt wrote: I only play on lower difficulties. I think the issue is more related to balancing higher difficulties. Both the supply line problem and the archer problem are exacerbated by the penalties the player gets and the bonuses the AI gets in higher difficulties. The supply line cost penalties in higher difficulties is just too large. And the bonuses the AI gets in melee combat are too large as well. That incentivizes players to use melee as nothing more than meat shields and rely on ranged/artillery/magic to actually do damage. I don't have a problem with lategame doomstacks comprised of multiple categories of expensive units. It's only when those doomstacks are comprised of only 1-2 type of units that it becomes a problem. I find it tedious to have to field multiple types of units in the same category. That's just too many different types of units in a single stack. And it gets monotonous too if every stack needs to have every category of unit. Frankly the game is soooo much more satisfying when this phoenix guard unit is reaaally special, or when chosing to include this sundragon means you will have to pass on those sweet sisters of averlorn. Lore wise having frontline of Ironbreakers or Phoenix guards makes no sense either. They should be the pinacle of your forces, not your bread and butter frontline regulars. | ||
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andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
On February 07 2021 05:59 Biff The Understudy wrote: Frankly the game is soooo much more satisfying when this phoenix guard unit is reaaally special, or when chosing to include this sundragon means you will have to pass on those sweet sisters of averlorn. Lore wise having frontline of Ironbreakers or Phoenix guards makes no sense either. They should be the pinacle of your forces, not your bread and butter frontline regulars. It's the same way with the historical games. Fielding armies purely made of samurai or knights is unrealistic too. But it's needed from a gameplay perspective. If I'm fielding a balanced force of missile troops, cavalry, artillery, monsters, regular infantry and anti-large infantry, I don't want to have to make even further distinctions between cheap and elite units. It just feels like a micromanagement nightmare. I actually find myself ignoring regiments of renown for that reason. Or just lumping them in with similar units. | ||
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Archeon
3253 Posts
On February 07 2021 00:53 Biff The Understudy wrote: To me the problem is simpler than that. New stacks are increasingly more expensive thanks to the supply line mechanics so it makes no sense to take basic archers rather than sisters of Averlorn or spearmen rather Phoenix Guards. It's not rock paper cissor that needs fixing, it's the supply line mechanics that makes non elite units irrelevant. Maybe unit A is twice more expensive and twice better than unit B but five stacks of unit A is muuuuuch cheaper than ten stacks of unit B, so you only ever make stacks of units A because you want to minimize your number of stacks. Tabletop army caps solves that beautifully though. The game is really a million times better with the mod. I agree that supply lines makes monsters a lot better, but monsters and archers beat almost all units by cost. It's removal wouldn't change how numerically busted ranged burst is and that when I build melee infantry I know that I'm building a much weaker army than I could. Which is a shame, because there's nothing strategic about the use of archer or monster spam and every battle plays the same, while mixed infantry/cav matchups can be a lot of fun. But if supply lines weren't a thing the most efficient play would be to just get two elven t1 archer stacks instead of a SoA stack. The main reason I only play SFO nowadays if ever, because while archers are still a threat in SFO, they don't nuke half your hp down before units engage. @difficulty: battle difficulty boni are dumb, but even on normal ranged spam is way superior to anything but monster spam. Bretonian peasant archers have roughly the dps of a dread saurian (the highest monster dps) and hit targets at 3/4 of their range with close to pinpoint accuracy for some reason, while the dread Saurian will miss a lot more attacks. The difference is that on lower diffs the enemy doesn't field enough armies to be a threat, so it's easier to ignore efficiency. | ||
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akatama
Romania982 Posts
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Biff The Understudy
France7881 Posts
On February 07 2021 06:58 Archeon wrote: I agree that supply lines makes monsters a lot better, but monsters and archers beat almost all units by cost. It's removal wouldn't change how numerically busted ranged burst is and that when I build melee infantry I know that I'm building a much weaker army than I could. Which is a shame, because there's nothing strategic about the use of archer or monster spam and every battle plays the same, while mixed infantry/cav matchups can be a lot of fun. But if supply lines weren't a thing the most efficient play would be to just get two elven t1 archer stacks instead of a SoA stack. The main reason I only play SFO nowadays if ever, because while archers are still a threat in SFO, they don't nuke half your hp down before units engage. @difficulty: battle difficulty boni are dumb, but even on normal ranged spam is way superior to anything but monster spam. Bretonian peasant archers have roughly the dps of a dread saurian (the highest monster dps) and hit targets at 3/4 of their range with close to pinpoint accuracy for some reason, while the dread Saurian will miss a lot more attacks. The difference is that on lower diffs the enemy doesn't field enough armies to be a threat, so it's easier to ignore efficiency. Yep. Again that's why i love the tabletop cap so much. Elite units are still the way to go because the supply line mechanics is in place but at the same time you can't spam them and are forced to make balanced stacks. Also, while range are still overpowered, you still need someone to hold the line. If you invest all your rare and special unit points into ranged, your frontline will be garbage and you are gonna lose the battle anyway. Even if you nuked half the HP of those Chosen before they made contact. A quarter hp Chosen still mops the floor with those empire swordsmen. | ||
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Archeon
3253 Posts
On February 07 2021 23:49 akatama wrote: Ranged problem can easily be solved by lowering the amount of overall ammo. There's no need for them to get 20% ammo from skills and another 20% from techs (to say nothing of master engineer bonuses). Not only is it too much for battles, but it also breaks autoresolve, pushing ranged heavy factions ahead of others. That wouldn't solve that every time you run into an t1 archer stack you loose 40% health on all troops though unless you have a bunch of superfast t4/5 monsters. I prefer walking through tons of corruption over invading Ulthuan or Athel Loren because of how strong their low tier archers are. | ||
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andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
The natural counter to archers is cavalry. However, cavalry just feels too weak in recent games. In the WH games, I've been mostly ignoring them in favor of fast, cavalry-like monsters. It doesn't help that siege battles are just busted and cavalry are mostly useless there. That's partly why I favor heavy ranged/artillery/magic stacks. | ||
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Archeon
3253 Posts
That archers have decent hp values and sometimes even decent melee stats (orc/dwarfs/norsca/elven hybrids) and that most skirmish cav can fire while moving relegates most light cav/dogs to cleanup duty because quite often they can't fight archers or skirmishers without taking heavy losses. So ironically they are actually best combined with archers which generally suffer from the fact that all their damage gets split up fairly evenly between models and profit from a unit that can drive up losses. Also light cav is fairly good at splitting the AI apart, which again helps archers who vastly prefer taking units out one by one. Fighting cav just falls off a cliff the moment heavier monsters hit the field and are the only somewhat expensive unit type that looses to infantry-"counters". Non-AL-Shock cav is fun to play imo, but basically only pummels infantry and as pointed out by andrewlt paying 300-400 upkeep for a slot that is useless in half the battles feels pretty bad. Much better unit type when you mod out the majority of the very tedious siege battles (which I heavily recommend). Tbf almost all cav destroys chariots and routing units and in difference to infantry can shield backlines quite well especially if they happen to have AL, so having 1-2 cav units is quite helpful on occasion. If heavy shock cav gets to use their bonus they also deal a ton of damage. Cav unlike melee infantry can actually fulfill specific roles, but it's generally not very good at dealing with problematic units. | ||
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Latham
9560 Posts
An example of a pure ranged stack and what it can do  + Show Spoiler + I posted this as a semi-joke, so don't take it too seriously. Dwarves vs Skaven is already hugely in favor of Skaven and this is a multiplayer battle, not a campaign skirmish. But it's still hilarious to see how they shred the stunties. I imagine Sisters of Avelorn &/or Waywatchers can do similar stuff, and I imagine to a much wider range of factions. | ||
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akatama
Romania982 Posts
As if this was not enough, capacity for Plague Priests is very easy to get since Bell Polisher followers rain from the sky (and this is after their drop rate got nerfed). Plus you can get them in lord version so you don't have to waste a single army slot. The Skavenblight Gouda is some strong stuff. | ||
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CuddlyCuteKitten
Sweden2592 Posts
Sure archers are great (Teclis seaguard stack with 4 stardragons ftw) but Mazdamundi with a full temple guard stack will just roll everything with a few units for support. Same for kro-gar and saurus just that you get the ball rolling way sooner. Even cav can be good. Reiksguard with Franz solves a lot of early game problems with their +10 vs large. | ||
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Archeon
3253 Posts
Naturally there are some that buff naturally strong units like Ikkit or Imrik (who also get earlier access), but a lot of the LLs get only slight boni and upkeep reductions to units that are either unlocked when the campaign is mostly over or that are outclassed by other picks (Malekith f.e. gets the best of both worlds). If you level your Blood kiss Lord to lvl 12 he gets bats free of upkeep, yay. Tbf CA has been getting better at making more unique campaigns, Grom, Ikkit, Snikch, Markus Wulfhardt, TicTacToe all support unique playstyles that are quite strong. Some could maybe be a little less busted, but one of the reasons I enjoyed Grom and TicTacToe were that I could get away with building armies that would totally be crap normally. But especially the old world Lords often feel very generic, give slight boosts to units that you won't keep for long or slap a generic -50% upkeep on heroes which doesn't really matter because by the time you can get a lot you're on average strength rank 1. So you just get what you always get and they basically are just a generic Lord that's a slightly better fighter. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17238 Posts
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Archeon
3253 Posts
Siege rework is likely in according to GraceCA iirc, Chaos invasion too considering that there are 4 new factions for these and that we'll see some map changes. Supply lines and horde mechanics are somewhat likely to see reworks eventually considering that CA experimented with these already in TWW2, whether we see them on release remains to be seen. I'm not holding my breath for unit type rebalancings, missile troops have only grown stronger over the course of warhammer. Generally I enjoy Vortex ministories and custom objectives, so I hope something like that is in. Tbf that works much better with more Lords, so if they release the chaos factions with 1 each I don't mind if they don't have objectives that streamline their campaign. | ||
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CuddlyCuteKitten
Sweden2592 Posts
Just in general add more depth to the overland map. Supply rework is also badly needed. I would like to see benefits of having more smaller armies doing stuff on their own with cheaper units. Like armies with <5 units can be lead by heroes and have massively reduced upkeep, armies <10 units do not cause supply line effects. Make unit tiers not affect this equally. Tier 1 units are one supply point, star dragon is 5, skaven slave is 0,1. Allow armies to merge into mega armies preventing lightning strikes but reducing move speed per turn by 20 %. Cap strikes per turn to 1. So many changes that could be good. | ||
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Archeon
3253 Posts
That being said if it comes with a rebalancing I'm in favor of a corruption mechanic that increases general costs with number of towns instead of supply lines. But these two need to happen together imo, else it'll be like Stellaris where the first unit you get is the most cost efficient thing to spam (fixed now in Stellaris). There's a multiplayer point limiter mod for armies that imo would go a long way to combat doomstacks. I prefer this over f.e. tabletop caps because I get the freedom to get a small elite army or a large trash one. Map movement is btw the thing that holds the AI back the most, but since I like fighting against the odds I hope that the AI pertains some weaknesses that you can use as long as it's not super cheesy. I'm not sure about diplomacy tbh. I don't think it's good in TWW2, but outside of how hard it is to get the small deals going with neutral factions it isn't really infuriating and I feel that a more complex diplomacy would move the focus of the game and want TWW to remain a wargame. Agreed that cults would be cool and I really would like to see another scouting method or starts with more heroes, because especially on higher diff I have to play the start mostly blind, which is one of the more common reasons for resets. Overall corruption could be a lot more interactive and I feel that between dilemmas, undercities and heroes there are tools there to do this. F.e. you could give Chaos undercities where you go through one of the four gods to corrupt the city. Heroes could trigger corruption dilemmas if they stay within the vicinity of an undercity for say 5 turns. The problematic part with spying/corruption is again asynchronous balance, so the AI would have to get either a very toned down version or no access to these features. Because else getting -public order events every 2 turns in your capital because there's a swarm of heroes from the 9 factions you're at war with doesn't sound like fun to me. | ||
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akatama
Romania982 Posts
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Archeon
3253 Posts
If we are talking about getting other games mechanics I think that Troy's resource system has a lot of potential to limit monsters. The largest problem I have with monsters isn't that some are op, it's that they are spammable. Having a unique resource income that limits how many you can afford would imo be a great way to limit them without feeling extremely artificial or snowbally. It would also give a reason to get phoenixes over dragons f.e., which is a common problem. Warhammer's take could be to make the upkeep based on trade resources, which would both give potentially some depth to trade agreements as well as give provinces some more situational value than just income. Some factions like Norsca could get them through regular monster hunts, which would add secondary objectives to the map. On a side note I hope they revisit the tier system. I'd prefer cities to get build up to t3 and after that you pay growth and a lot of money for every high tier building. As a result there'd be more of decision between different building paths instead of just the question whether you want t4/t5 or not in the city. | ||
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akatama
Romania982 Posts
I wish they would bring Proving Grounds back for changes they consider but are not 100% sure of. Balance aside, some stuff I would love: 1. Advanced campaign settings. Let us customize more stuff, give a bias to certain factions so it's more likely they will grow big. Different end game crises. Let us choose between several start options (different start units, a stronger starting city etc.; think back to Heroes of Might and Magic). Hell, even different rule sets, imagine if you could play Vortex on the grand campaign map as long as you select a compatible faction. 2. Points of interest on land similar to those at sea. Give us more stuff to interact with that does not involve going to war with other factions. 3. More consistency with skills and skill lines. Look at the vampire coast blue line, then look at wh1 factions. They are terrible by comparison. Look at Wight Kings or Empire Captains, then look at any lizardman hero. 4. Mounts as items you buy instead of requiring skill points. 5. An overhaul of the equipment and follower UI. The current one is terrible to manage in longer campaigns, endless scrolling through tiny windows. | ||
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